I broke my differential and when I was replacing it I believe I separated the axle from the upper CV joint (I think that's the right terminology. The green metal part can freely spin without the wheel hub spinning. And I can move the axle around. I read online that you can get it back into without removing the rubber housing. My question is can this be done with the axle still connected to the wheel hub? I don't want to try to remove that, I don't have the socket and with the rust on my car and the age, , 99 I don't know how well it would go.

 

The interwebs told me I could, but I couldn't manage it. I found the rubber boot was too stiff for me to manipulate the two pieces, compounded by (obviously) not being able to see what you are doing. I took the boot off, not hard to do, remounted the two, and replaced the boot.

There were a couple of trickier bits IIRC, but just for you, I wrote it up in my build thread.

 

Thanks for the advice on taking the boot off. I was worried the ss ring would break if I tried removing it so that's why I was avoiding it. But so I took it off and.... A metal shard and ball bearings fell out, and hit my face lol 😆. Turns out it didn't pop out, it broke when the diff broke. Time for a new axel.... I am not looking forward to trying to remove that crap.

Thanks for your help

 

Most axles can come apart and go back together. The ball bearing I'd expect, the metal shard is most likely a damaged bearing cage though. Typically the clamps are removed and thrown away, boot pulled back, and you can rotate the axle around to put the ***** back in one at a time.